As men march home from civil war to Shrewsbury in the winter of 1141, the captured Sheriff Gilbert Prestcote is not among them, though Elis, a young Welsh prisoner, is. He is delivered to the abbey to begin a tale that will test Brother Cadfael's sense of justice. By good fortune, it seems, the prisoner can be exchanged as Sheriff Prestcote's ransom. What none expects is that good-natured Elis will be struck down by Cupid's arrow when he meets the sheriff's own daughter; regaining her father means losing her new love. When the sheriff, ailing and frail, is at last brought to the abbey's infirmary—and murdered there—suspicion falls on the prisoner, who only has his Welsh honor to earn Brother Cadfael's help in finding the truth. Writing as Ellis Peters, linguist and scholar Edith Pargeter (1913–1995) created one of the great historical mystery sleuths in Brother Cadfael, the worldly Welsh Benedictine monk of Shrewsbury Abbey in 12th-century Shropshire, England. After a score of Brother Cadfael mysteries and many others Peters earned the Edgar Award, the Cartier Diamond Dagger, and enrollment in the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to Literature."